


And Hurt Not the Oil

by mercredigirl



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dark, Gen, Meereenese Knot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-08
Updated: 2011-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercredigirl/pseuds/mercredigirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is a terrible habit, but she has taken to bringing wine to bed with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Hurt Not the Oil

It is a terrible habit, but she has taken to bringing wine to bed with her. She keeps the flask close by – there are many who would have her blood, after all, or at least would pay for it – and she finds that a drink or two ushers in sleep all the gentler. Missandei wrinkles her nose at the sourness in the air in the morning, but what is a little common distaste to a queen?

Her dreams are uneasy. She never remembers them in the morning, but while she slumbers – and this is where the wine helps, damping the feelings like wet wood on fire – she is not quite herself.

In her dreams she is flying, not as she does on her silver but with leathery wings beating hard against air at great heights, with the pyramids far below her giving way to hill and plain. In her dreams her breath is flame and her fingers curved claws of strength, and she is not the gentle girl-woman in unwieldy robes with white unwrinkled skin. In her dreams she lands by the huts of the country-folk, prowls among the pens and sheepfolds, and surveys her children – her children! – like they are so much prey.

Later, when she has arisen stiff-jointed and aching, when she sits in court and orders so much to be paid to this farmer and so much as compensation to that, for every charred bone they bring to her – later in the day she can forget that ashy taste in her mouth when she wakes, a taste of blood and meat which her nephew who is so very far away in the frozen wastes has come to recognise as well.

**Author's Note:**

> And possibly House Manderly would recognise it too.


End file.
